Enormous Ice Sheet Discovered On Mars

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NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has
recently found a remarkable covert ice deposit under Utopia Planitia on the Red
Planet that is expected to comprise as much water as Lake Superior, the largest
of the Great Lakes of North America.

With the help of Italian-built SHARAD (Shallow
Radar) tool, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s team was able to evaluate
that the deposit is almost 80 and 170 meters (260 and 560 feet) thick, and it
lies below a coating of soil up to 10 meters (33 feet) deep. The outcomes are
available in Geophysical Research Letters.

This massive ice deposit is the ideal target for
exploration. Co-author of this research paper, Jack Holt, from the University
of Texas, Austin, said in a statement:

This deposit is probably more accessible than most water ice on Mars, because
it is at a relatively low latitude and it lies in a flat, smooth area where
landing a spacecraft would be easier than at some of the other areas with
buried ice,

Utopia Planitia has a diameter of about 3,300 kilometers
(2,050 miles). Lead author Cassie Stuurman, also from the University of Texas,
said:

This
deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with
dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted
than it is today,

Scientists suggest that during the Red Planet's
mysterious past, Utopia Planitia may have been where the current North Pole is.
Leslie Tamppari, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said:

We know early Mars had enough liquid water on the surface for rivers and lakes.
Where did it go? Much of it left the planet from the top of the atmosphere. But
there's also a large quantity that is now underground ice, and we want to keep
learning more about that.